Carriacou
Carriacou – one week on the hard
Carriacou is the seventh star on Grenada’s flag. The name means surrounded by many reefs. What we learned later, it was also smugglers island. Pssst… still is and the vibe is pretty much there. As you can imagine, we loved it from the very first day 🙂
It was a very pleasant 6-hours sail. We’d been checking wooden plug first every 2 minutes, then every 20 minutes and eventually every 2 hours, as it was luckily completely dry.
Beauty of living on land…
Next day we took the Dog out of the water and started prepping for work. First – the base camp… Obviously. the hammock, bikes, the tent, beers. We got tired half-way and went for a beer. I mean… you have to hydrate, right? 🙂
Beer that we found, was in idiotic prices, so we bought some rum, some ice, guava juice and nutmeg for the rum punch instead. We made a decent plan for a week, then cut it in half and went exploring new neighbourhood. In few minutes Vincent got very popular because of his shiny, green bike and faded away in the dust with new friends. Marcin and I, as usual, introduced ourselves to the neighbours and started to gather some useful information*. It took us about 15 min to realize that we are moving way too fast for this island. Heat reached us simultaneously with surprised gaze from local audience resting in the shade of palm trees at the side of the road. Nobody was talking as everyone was mastering survival technique of cooling by not moving. Oh.. we are smart now! you observe, you follow, you win (survive). you fight – you lose! We slowly melted down to the vibe and started to observe.
Now I want you to feel it, hear it, smell it…. follow me:
Carriacou. Tyrrel Bay. Dry hills around with few houses burning in the sun. The beach. Blue-green water. Mangroves on one side. The yard. Marina-soon-to-be. Ferry dock. Put the sun glasses on. One street along the beach. The shop. Veggie stop (you can’t call 1,5m2 a shop). The Laundry. Shabby, greenish container on the beach. The shed – Crazy Friendly Lady Veggies. Few palm trees. The bar. Stop – hydrate. The shed – oh no! – the bar 😉 Chickens. A bar. Few dead dinghies on the beach. Dive shop. A bar. Chickens. Butcher lady. Food bar. Lazy Turtle. Dive station. Customs. A Bar. Sit – little breeze. Fuel dock. Reef. Hill. House on the hill. Stop. Nothing is specially trimmed for tourists. Everything just is what it is. Dry and hot. Men, as always, sitting in the shadow and contemplating their existence. Women, as always, taking care of everything else…. Boats on the anchorage not that fancy and definitely there for longer than they should, but it doesn’t matter – it feels good here. This place has its own pace. Hot. Everybody is moving in kinda slow motion. Even now when I am writing it, I am naturally slowing down. You know that you can overdo very easy, so you are actually doing less then you could…hot… yeeeaaaah!
There is a coffeeshop owned by English-French couple which is breakfast and gossip point to all non-local locals. It is also a chandlery, book swap and local art gallery, all in one. The floor inside is cold. There is a bucket with water by the entrance so you can clean your feet from sand. Everybody is walking barefoot here. Ceiling fan is stirring the air. It’s not exactly AC, but still it is nice to sit in the rocking chair, drink a coffee and read a book… definitely my type of chandlery.
We ordered new valve with through-hull and, with perspective of few days waiting time**, we decided to repaint our anchors (orange obviously) and the markings on the chain and to install the salt water pump. You can’t do much, especially when you are so unprepared for such event and ordering anything more than valves would take not only money but time that we didn’t have.
* start-up information set: laundry place, lunch place, water, chandlery, local legends, trending veggies, limited goodies (good to know what is stupidly expensive, most of the time you can probably survive without it), first local businessman John (tree number 3… whatever you need, maaaan – I have everything what you need).
** few days is never like 2 days. Caribbean factor 10%, plus taxes gives around 4-5 days. Just so you know for the future….
Birthday party at Lady Donna’s
Vincent and a bunch of his new friends were busy with their new business, which was selling ice-cream to us and some other people working on their boats at the yard. They charged twice a shop price and ate half of it :). As you can imagine, soon they announced bankruptcy and went exploring yard dumpster. This was not just a dumpster. This was YARD DUMPSTER, which in 8-year old boys language translates to treasure hunt!
On Saturday we got invitation to Lady Donna’s Birthday Party. This is annual tradition and Lady Donna is THE persona of significant posture and grand reputation. Queen of the Tyrrel Bay! Party was held in her bar. We found it in the dark of the island as we followed huge wall of reggae sounds. Pitch black, not even moon, hot and dry, wooden hut with some dimmed lights inside, plenty of people… cruisers, locals, cruiser-locals. Kids running around, playing on the street, chasing dogs, cats and lizards. Goats hiding from kids in the bushes. Lady Donna graciously accepted birthday wishes and ordered to drink and eat. Yes Ma’am! We were treated royally. Food was amazing. Drinks were served directly from the fridge. But there was no electricity outside and fridge was broken anyway, so they put it on the back and filled with ice cubes. Beer was beautifully cold. The only problem with the beer is when you get happier you think you see more, but in fact you see less… so fridge started to leak and soil turned into slippery mud and at that point Marcin got himself very ugly foot injury.
blood + mud = tetanus injection, quick recipe on how to get famous on the small island.
In the morning, still feeling the consequences of the yesterday’s beer, we video-diagnosed the injury with med-parents and started to look for some local medical aid.
– uuu man… Sunday? only Hospital in Hillsborough.
– Google maps says it is 6km, we kinda maybe could walk, or maybe cycle?
– uuu man… walk? no, up the hill, up the hill maaaan…
– Scheisse means Shit – I mumbled
– yeah, I’ll drive you. I just have to finish my stuff now. I’ll be back in half an hour. – and he drove away leaving me speechless.
– Thank you! – I screamed to the dust.
Princess Royal Hospital, the only available one on Carriacou, was indeed far and up the hill with the most stunning view and few old cannons in front of the building. So, Marcin got his tetanus shot, I got the view and Vincent got cannons! On the way back we got guided tour around. We learned other face of the island. You wouldn’t believe how slow vibe and mellowness of citizens can be transformed to the crazy when they drive. On the island where every 500m there is big concrete speed bump? 50M/h on 500m? on the wrong side of the street? After few months on the boat, I clutched the car seat till my knuckles got white!
On the way back, Keith, our saviour and the driver, gave us the tour around the island. We learned about water management, which means basically that every single house on the island is sitting on the big tank and everybody is collecting rain water. There are no natural sources, so this is the only way. We also learned about lime plantations, slaves, a little bit about smuggling and boat building. Vincent got all million answers to his questions about reefs, sharks and fishing. Finally, when our story came out, we also learned about Tobago, which was his most favourite island in the Caribbean. He provided us with few names, food, places and general tips on anchoring there. He seems like nice guy, right? And he was, just not the regular nice – he was grumpy islander intensively trying to hide his friendly side and to keep up the “leave me alone, bloody tourists” face. But with each sentence he gave us, he just couldn’t resist the joy of this conversation. Eventually it totally possessed him and by the end of the day we’d been chatting cheerfully and telling all silly stories form the past.
Police? What do you need police for?– he asked quite amused – if anybody steals anything, by the end of the day everybody on the island knows who did it, and their mother is probably already giving them a hard time, haha…
And that is funny reality of living on the small island. Next day we found out that everybody on Carriacou knows about this big Polish fella, who couldn’t handle the partey, and… you know, poor thing.. cut the finger and ended up in the hospital. Wherever I went, I had to tell again and again how Marcin was doing 🙂 Beautiful mix of compassion, local news, gossip and entertainment!
So how does it feel to sleep on land again?
Living on the boat on the land was a challenge for us. The boat moves (or doesn’t) strangely. Noises are all new and only that means multiple panic wake-ups at night. You have to use the toilet outside, dishes – nightmare. The intensity of birds, cows, goats, chickens, everything that you haven’t heard in such a long time is overwhelming AND there are mosquitoes! Let’s make it clear … cows, bird, goats, chickens, roosters are ok. Moving boat, noises, toilet and mosquitos suck. However, one night somebody got lazy and forgot about the cow that was dining right next to us and she was performing arias in this heartbreaking cow-opera the whole night long.
We also made friends with black bird and a pigeon. First one was every single day challenging our wind generator to a duel. Maaaan… this little dude was fierce! Hilarious – Little Don Quixote de Carriacou. The pigeon was arogantly walking on the deck like some superintendent and recalculating the length of the boat. …. In the application form you stated 41 feet, right? Seems more…. let me check! ….145, 146, oh poop! – Duuude! why don’t you find another toilet? – oh, okay, solar panel looks inviting….
Week seemed very short. The Dog got sealed with new valve and through-hull and went back to the water. We cleaned the poop, marked Carriacou on our top ten list of Caribbean islands and sailed away.
Now…
Let us take you to Tobago to listen to bamboo trees. There are stories that live in those forests…
Carriacou Carriacou Carriacou
